"Stuff is eaten by dogs, broken by family and friends, sanded down by the wind, frozen by the mountains, lost by the prairie, burnt off by the sun, washed away by the rain. So you are left with dogs, family, friends, sun, rain, wind, prairie and mountains. What more do you want?"
Federico Calboli

Monday, September 22, 2008

But first, a few links...

... to amuse or appall...

Amuse and amaze: Annie D and a few others sent this incredible video of dolphins blowing and playing with "smoke rings" of bubbles. There are quite a few more out there on YouTube including one of belugas in Japan.

A sad note: Jim Crumley is dead. I didn't know him well but he was the writer's writer-- every writer I know loved his stories, written and in conversation. He was also one of those rare writers who kept constant track of what you were doing and always had encouraging words. I don't know why the movies haven't latched on to his tales. Fittingly, the last time I talked to him was over drinks in the bar at Chico Hot Springs in Montana, "immortalized" in the cult film Rancho Deluxe. It must have been at least ten years ago... hard to believe.

Finally, two quotes to think about. The first is from Jason Wilson, from the intro to Best American Travel Writing 2002 (in which I appear):

"The travel writing one finds in magazines too often suffers from areluctance to transcend the topic at hand, a reluctance toward digression ofany kind. I realize that some of this is the result of space concerns, but it isstill unfortunate. Anyone who reads travel classics such Gerald Brenan'sSouth from Granada or Robert Byron's The Road to Oxiana or D. H.Lawrence's Sea and Sardinia or Graham Greene's The Lawless Roadsknows that digression is a part of all great travel writing. In many ways, thedigressions are the story.

"Ther is a saying emong hunters that he cannot be a gentleman whyche loveth not hawkyng and hunting, which I have hard old woodmen wel allow as an approved sentence among them. The like sayinge is that hee cannot be a gentleman whych loveth not a dogge."